Manja Pai Super Hero

"Unna padikka vechen, avana paNayamaa vechen.

Unna Karuppu gown maati azhagu paaka, avanukku Kaakhi uniform maatinen. 

Nee Degree vaangarthuku avan kai le Degree glass ah kuduthen. 

Unna College ku anupinen, avana Garage ku anupinen"

Ammayappan Mudhaliar's immortal words in Samsaram Adhu Minsaram while chiding his eldest son Chidambaram for being disrespectful to his younger brother Siva. While admitting that he discriminated between his sons, the protagonist brings out the contrast in their trajectories in life. The beauty of the alliterations in these Tanglish sentences is not lost on the audience, thanks to the superb dialogue delivery by Visu himself. 

Yes, I do know many Visu movie dialogues by heart. There are those who think that his movies were ridiculous. There is some truth in some of the criticism. For example, the way he treated feminism and female characters, but one needs to consider the nuance involved. There were movies in which he seemed to relegate women to the position of second class citizens who were expected to obey their husbands and stomach difficulties with the demeanor of a duck on water. On the other hand, within the constraints of those times, he did portray the silent strength of women. Uma (Samsaram Adhu Minsaram) orchestrates the reunion of the family even though she has no direct decision making powers. The women in Kudumbam oru Kadhambam demonstrate their tenacity by braving storms and earning the respect of their menfolk. These movies were not revolutionary in terms of women breaking the mold but every woman in the 80s and 90s could relate to them and their struggles. 

The importance of on-screen representation is old news to us today. In the 80s and 90s, when Tamil cinema shamelessly cast women exclusively for the "glamour" quotient, Visu's movies were indeed a breath of fresh air. His heroines dressed like your neighbor and rarely wore make up. The sets resembled your home. The central plot in the movie revolved around a common middle-class issue like property disputes, family budget, marital discord, greed, care of aging parents and dowry. What set Visu's movies apart was the clever screenplay, the dialogues and the climax which was usually shot in the pillared courtyard of a South Indian home and of course, the lead character played by Visu himself. He was the "Mama" with a manja pai. He loved food, respected women (in the 80s way) and elders and valued family above all else. He was resourceful and came up with out of the box ideas to rescue the family and bring justice to those who deserved it. Best of all, the movies (with the exception of Varavu Nalla Uravu) ended on a happy note.

Who wouldn't love a super hero in veshti with manja pai?

Happy for you

This post is an exercise I have been trying for some time now. I wrote whatever sentence came to my mind. No editing. I did not plan on any plot, no ending in mind. This is just to see what I can come up with, by letting my mind go free. I enjoyed it.

"I'll give you 30 rupees for that"

"No no! Fixed price madam, 50 rupees."

"Come on anna, 35"

"What are you going to gain by saving 15 rupees...fixed price madam"

"I am not being unreasonable. 35."

"Ok, give me 40"

"Fine, what choice do I have? Here you go"

She got the pair of earrings and started walking away, a sense of satisfaction traveling through her veins creating a sense of victory in its wake. The joy of haggling for 15 rupees for a nice pair of earrings that you really did not need but want to get nevertheless is unequaled. It is a girl thing.

She was about to cross the road when she heard her name being called out.

"Harini! Harini, here, behind you on your right!"

She turned and saw Prakash. 

"Oh no, not this guy" she thought.

"Oh hi!" she smiled. That smile was reserved for such emergency situations. She felt like kicking herself for stopping to buy those stupid earrings. She would have been on the bus by now. 

"Long time no see. How have you been?"

"Good good." she smiled again. She hoped the conversation would wither away. She wanted to exchange 2 more sentences after which she could safely say that she would like to talk more but she really had to leave. Polite, but not interested. That would be the perfect way to leave. Only if life were that easy.

"I was actually going to call you now. How is work?"

"Going good, how is work for you?"

Great, 2 exchanges down, one more to go.

"Going good. Actually I am thinking of getting married and settling down now."

Oh God, now I have to be polite, exclaim that it is great to hear that and ask him something about it. One more exchange of pleasantries. Fine.

"That is great! All the best!" 

There, polite but not interested. Now dude, just say thank you so that I can leave.

"Do you remember your friend Ramaa from school? We are in a relationship now. We are getting married next month." He gushed.

Aww, I am sure that is the most important thing to you but I am really not interested. 

"Oh yes I remember her. It is very nice to hear that you guys are a couple. Do convey my best wishes to her too. We have not been in touch for a while."

"Oh, you have not spoken to her in a while, isn't it? We talk about you often. Wait, let me call her. She would love to talk to you"

What? No no, this cannot be happening to me.

"Oh, it is ok. She must be busy. I'll find her on Facebook and talk to her later. Don't disturb her now"

"No no, she has resigned her job and is at home. She will be thrilled to talk to one of her old school friends."

Oh man, why do I get caught in these situations! I should have just got her phone number and said that I would call her later.

He dialled Ramaa's number.

"Hi sweetie, guess what, I am with Harini. Yes, yes. I just saw her here. Yes, I was just telling her about us. Do you want to talk to her?"

She cursed her own politeness and took the phone grudgingly, while maintaining a neutral smile plastered on her face.

"Hi Ramaa! How are you?...Yes, I am good....Yes, he told me. Very happy for you guys, congrats...Oh no no, why would I mind. We are old friends but we have not been in touch for a while now. Why would I mistake you for not telling me...Seriously, I am happy for you. My best wishes to both of you...Yes, I'll definitely try to come...uhh, ok yes, I'll come..Nice talking to you, let me give the phone to Prakash"

He took the phone, went a little further, spoke to Ramaa for a few seconds and came back.

Ok, are we done here? I really must leave now.

"It was nice meeting you after a long time, Prakash. Congrats again. I need to leave now..I have some work."

"Thanks Harini..." He hesitated "Thank you for talking to Ramaa. It really means a lot to both of us."

"Hey, no problem. Bye!"

"Bye" He looked very thankful and relieved.

She was certainly relieved to walk away.

She rushed to the bus stop and got into her bus. She took out her headphones and started listening to her favorite song. She had not listened to it for years. She got a text message. It was from Prakash:

"Thank you again Harini, for being so kind. It is really nice of you to be happy for me and Ramaa. I am so sorry about everything, again. I regret all the unhappiness I caused in our marriage. I hope our divorce was the right thing for you too."

Of course it was the right thing. She deleted the text and changed the song.

Kids and brats

The trumpets blared. The thavils sounded like their membrane would tear any moment. The singer's voice was definitely on the verge of cracking. Our hero could feel his heart thumping hard enough to shatter the rib cage. He squared his shoulders, fetched the arrow from behind him and nocked it on the bow. 

He furiously glared at me and shouted "Get ready to DIEEEEE! Jai Shri Ram!"

I cowered and bowed low. "Please Oh mighty Hanuman, please let me go!"

He looked at me, wavering between the impulse to finish me off and the benevolent instinct to forgive me.

"Soya, it is getting late for school! WHERE ARE YOU?"

He looked behind me. Amma was walking towards us. I looked at him, wondering how he would react to the unexpected entry of my mother. Clearly he had not expected her to barge into our confrontation.

He blinked. He scurried away, dropping his bow and arrow.

I know what you are thinking. Why does Hanuman need a bow and arrow to kill me? I hope you also wondered why he wanted to kill me, in the first place. Oh, and why did he run away when he saw my mother approaching us?

Well, "Hanuman" was our tenants' kid. He was 4 years old at the time and loved watching mythological serials (Om Namah Shivay and Jai Hanuman) and Shakthimaan. I was his only playmate. I think I was in 5th standard. He got to kill me with bow and arrow or with his bare hands, chase me around though I had to stop and slow down many times to let him catch up with me. He was my only playmate too, so I got to make krishnar kondai on his head (they had not cut his hair for a long time) and drag him to all my grocery shop errands. 

It was so much fun playing around with him. His parents moved into a portion in our house when he was a baby. I loved carrying him around. I never had a sibling, so I never missed a chance to carry babies or to play with other younger kids. The advantage of playing with younger kids was, they doted on me :) I was the only human being other than their parents that could reach inaccessible shelves in the kitchen. I was the only person their parents would trust - I could vouch that they did not break anything and their parents believed me since I had a "chamathu" image. Even though I was elder to them, I was young enough to play with them and teach them things. I preferred younger kids because they never left me out in their games. I was the one in charge. My experience with older kids was mostly along these lines:

 "You are too short. You sit out for this round" 

or

 "You are the catcher. We will go and hide now forever".

I was the only child to my parents and we lived in a big house. That is the most disadvantageous situation for a child though people seldom see that. It is fine to have all the clothes, toys and attention but when one has to play alone in a water theme park - surely no amount of clothes or ice cream can compensate for that level of boredom. I don't like ice cream anyway. My parents did their best - they played chess with me, they took me out, encouraged me in everything I set out to do but I still have the feeling that I would have been a very different person if I had grown up with a sibling.

One must be bossed around by an elder sibling and irritated by a younger sibling while growing up. Practical jokes, fights over trivial things - these are essential aspects of the growing up process. Since I had none of these, I grew up as the child who followed rules, colored within the borders, was the teachers' pet, and became the school head girl. I could never lie with a straight face even for a prank. I have never skipped a chapter while studying for exams.

Strangely, though elders always advised them to follow my example, my playful, relaxed side has been kept alive thanks only to my bratty friends. I have always had a rebel friend at every stage of my life so far -one friend who is the anti-thesis of everything that I am. This friend never cares about the opinion of other people. This friend does not have a 'reputation' that he/she is forced to live up to. She/He is too cool for words and sticks up for me in all circumstances. This friend is everything I would like to be. I feel most comfortable with these brats. These are the ones who have never made me feel alone or awkward. They always bring out the irreverant, wicked Soya. I am at my sarcastic best with them. I laugh more, and live more. I am criticized the most by them, but unlike criticism from other quarters, their comments never sting my ego. I am the happiest when I am with them. 

So what if I have never jumped over the college wall? So what if I did not play pranks in class? So what if I did not imitate random callers in the hostel telephone? I have been around to enjoy all these innocuous, funny experiences. Thank god for my little playmates and rebel friends!

The Correct Answer

Whoever told people that dreaming was good? Dreams can sometimes leave you exhausted.

Her eyes opened unwillingly and the brain willed the muscles to move towards the kitchen. As usual, there was no food in the fridge - just milk. Coffee was made and consumed on her favorite easy chair. She started contemplating on life.

She decided to break the usual routine of watching TV and decided to go for a run. Or a jog. Or a jumpy walk. Or a casual stroll. Well, let's say she managed to get herself out of the house.
It was summer and the birds were chirping. There were flowers all around. Children playing, grandparents sitting on park benches. Balloon sellers were selling balloons. There was a mobile cotton candy stall and many children clamoring for the attention of the vendor who was smiling at all of them. A policeman was helping a blind person cross the road. 

That last image should have warned her.

*Honkkkk Screeeeccchhhhhh*

"HEY watch yourself lady!"

"These things just walk down the street as if they own the road! Pah!"

"Get off the road, you! I wonder whose face I saw when I woke up thi morning! Grrr!"

Her eyelids flew open and she nearly fell off the easy chair.

"Damn! I dozed off while drinking coffee?? What is wrong with me?!"

Well, she told herself - "I really have to get out. Get a life, girl." Her mind shot back "Whose life?" and laughed.

"This is my problem - living in my own world", she thought.

It was raining outside. She took an umbrella and went out. She walked on the road for some time, observing cars. There were not many people to observe and she did not particularly crave for human company. People can be really boring. They can be really interesting to themselves and to other people, but sometimes she just found it tiresome to be around people.She decided that not being a "people person" was her problem. 

"I need to cultivate an interest in people. Everybody is talking about people, whoever they are." She took out her note taking app on the phone.

To do
------
1. Become a people person

"OK, what else is my problem?" She thought long and hard. "Ah, yes, I am single. It is widely believed by people that it is not good to be single. And it is important to value peoples' opinion, if one wants to become a people person. Being single loses its coolness quotient once you cross a certain age. Then you become the old lady with the cats."

"No" she corrected. "I'll never own cats. They have an attitude problem. I will most probably be the old lady with the dogs."

"Huh? You are supposed to not get to that point, idiot. Add it to the list."

To do
------
1. Become a people person
2. Do not become old lady with dogs

"Well, what sort of an aim is that? Make it a positive statement. Those things have a greater probability of happening, according to scientific studies made up by popular personality coaches. OK."

To do
------
1. Become a people person
2. Find a guy

"Find a guy? Too open ended. Find a guy to go on road trips? Find a guy to take selfies with? Find a guy to marry? Find a guy to carry heavy grocery items? Be specific."

To do
------
1. Become a people person
2. Find a guy to marry

"Good. What kind of a guy do I want to marry? Well, that is a question without merit. I do not want to get married, people want me to. So I should probably ask them. They know what is best. Not necessarily for themselves, but for me."

To do
------
1. Become a people person
2. Find a guy to marry
3. Ask people whom to marry

"What next? One's problems are over if one gets married. One becomes two, you see."

Her mind started laughing at the absurd joke and stopped itself. She was a woman with a mission now. She turned back and walked home. She was going to get married and solve all her problems. Who said 42 was the answer to all problems? The correct answer is marriage.

Lost And Found

Actual Location: Nah, that would ruin the suspense.

Ok, assumed location: On the way to Yosemite National Park

People in the plot: 6 girls, a 7-seater SUV, 6 smart phones, 2 GPS'es and a lot of snacks

People(?) outside the plot: Coyotes, scary looking trees, a mountain, and a few "highways"

Time: Around midnight to early morning 

The SUV was climbing up the mountain, on a highway with no shoulder. Folks in India, stop wondering why a road must have a shoulder. A shoulder is the side of the road where you can stop your vehicle - we don't need that in India since we have freedom to stop anywhere.
Soya felt she had achieved something. She was on a road trip with friends and we were driving around. Soya was officially a grown up. We had thoughtfully taken 2 GPS'es and all of us had smart phones. The world was at our fingertips and the satellite was our servant. We were tech savvy like that and had no care in the world. Music was being played and people were chatting away and laughing. And then it happened.

The white figure on the road with long hair looked up at us with white and red eyes. We all screamed and * ear splitting vehicle skidding screech noises *! The vehicle got out of control after hitting her and fell down the mountain. Not. Read on. (I know, sorry, read on.)

The driver missed an exit. Well, who was bothered. The GPS asked us not to sweat but to turn and go into some dark road. Some people started making worried noises but the general consensus was that darkness will lead us to light and 15 minutes later, it did. Only, Soya felt slightly worried. Why are we not going back to the "original" road, she wanted to know. But then, the GPS knows so many routes to the same destination, like the Chennai auto driver. It tailors the route according to your stupidity. If you keep missing exits, it will take your on a roundabout route just like the Chennai auto driver taking you from KK nagar to Ashok Nagar via Pondi Bazaar. (Not from Chennai? Hah!)

The vehicle started going up a mountain. We were again slightly worried after half an hour of driving along a narrow curvy path with no other vehicle in sight. The phones were useless since there was no network coverage. There was no board saying "Yosemite ungalai anbudan varaverkiradu" ("Yosemite welcomes you with love"). Soya asked "Umm guys, do we have enough fuel for the next 100+ miles?" in the general direction of the front seat occupants.

"No, we have 1/4th of the tank. Might come up to 80 more miles."

Hmm. Everybody was silent.

Soya: "Umm..shouldn't we find a gas station to get some fuel? We are short of at least 20 miles worth fuel." (Maths at school was not such a complete waste after all.)

Then the 2 hour frenzy began. The GPS took us to a deserted campsite which it claimed was a gas station. When we told it that it was scary n dark with no gas station and that it had lied to us, it refused to show us the way out and took us to dangerously narrow turns within the same campsite 5 times. Finally everybody prayed to God and took the one turn that the GPS kept missing and got out of the maze.

We then selected another gas station which had a familiar name in the GPS list. The road had now become a single lane. We kept driving though we did not know whether we had sufficient fuel to reach the fuel station. Coyotes ran by the side of the road, in the forest. I thought I heard wolves howling and bears peaking at us from behind trees. Thankfully we got down the ghostly mountain.

It was not happily ever after there. No. Instead of finding ourselves on some highway in California, we found a board telling us that we were just 42 miles away from Carson city.
I had to jog my memory and some random reference from some Hollywood movie reminded me that this was Nevada, not California. To cut a lo-hoo-ng story short, we did pull into a fuel station. We took over the gas station store's computer and discovered that we were another 4 hours away from Yosemite, and that we had been climbing up the wrong mountain. If search parties had tried looking for us the next day, they would have been looking for us in the wrong mountain's valleys.

All of us did feel precious the moment we reached the gas station. We all thought we were going too die. A part of my mind was a tad, just a tad, disappointed because getting back alive from the devil mountain meant I was going to be a year older the next week on my birthday. Then I shook of that girlie mind voice. We were lost and found. That was more important to us and to the car rental company which had loaned us the wonderful GPS.

What happened after that? Well, this is just a sneak peak into the book I am going to write on this subject. Stay tuned.

Boring? Or not?

How do you like Shah Rukh Khan's face on TV almost every hour? Boring, no? Do you like the same coffee everywhere in the world? I don't know about you but for us filter kaapi lovers, that would mean something like the end of the world! Do you always choose the same color for clothes? (I am accused of being "monochromatic" since I always choose blue for my clothes) Do you utter the same words everyday? Can you even try to speak the same words everyday? No? 

Don't worry, that proves you are normal. I was not going to pronounce that you are suffering from some variety seeking syndrome. The wise people in the world do not seem to agree with us.

When I was a kid, we used to visit a family doctor. He knew everything, from delivering a child to mumbling soothing words near someone's deathbed. Later, a word called specialization was coined and it kicked out the family doctor. He was getting too monotonous it seems. He knew every patient's medical history and remembered every quirk in their system. He knew too much, so the wise people in the world decided to kill him. We now have specialists - different specialists take care of different parts of the body and finally the therapist talks to you for a fee when you go mad due to the number of bills you receive from the various specialists.

Isn't that variety? The knee specialist looks at so many knees during his career that he can no longer recognize people without looking at their knees. That is absolutely not monotonous.

We seem to have another confusion. We don't seem to understand the difference between growth and expansion. Expansion seems to be the only way to grow. If a company is earning Rs.1000, it must earn Rs.2000. Fine. After that? Rs.20,000 and so on. Then, we move to different countries and earn more. The ultimate aim is to suck up all the money on earth and then deploy pumps to suck more from other planets. 

(Perhaps that is why people are expanding horizontally too these days. The human waistline is following the growth patterns of our businesses. Then we decide to go "lean" and cut costs. We stop eating food and drink 5 coffees per day or use our corporate health club memberships to check office mail while sipping juice in the spa instead of working out in the gym.)

So what do you think? Is one solution for everything, like a family doctor, monotonous? Is cultivating different crops on the same field monotony or is growing only one crop year after year boring and limited? Walmart everywhere... OK, leave all those lofty questions. 

Tell me, is Shah Rukh Khan in IPL, Ra One, Fair and Handsome cream advertisement, Pepsi advertisement, Phir mile sur.. *out of breath* monotonous and boring or not? *stretches both hands outwards like SRK*

The power is yours!

Yes, I used to watch captain planet when I was a kid :)

Every problem on earth is because of one thing - power. People want power. They don't want the admiration of others or money or any of the thousand other reasons that we think of. Most problems boil down to an individual's or a group's thirst for power. Power over land, power over money, power over other lives. 

The medium they choose to establish power has changed over the ages but the intention has remained the same. Humans seem to have an innate nature to move towards inhuman practices. So much so that I sometimes doubt whether "being human" is even part of our nature - it is probably a state that we always strive to achieve.

In the olden days, power used to be the ability to procure food. Later, it was more about providing food and providing protection from enemies. Later, humans became more "civilized" and power was vested in the hands of those who provided salvation from sins. Those who bargained with God on your behalf. Those who created heaven and hell and got you a place in either of the places depending upon how you fared in their estimation. After that, it was in the hands of the orators and mesmerizers like Hitler. They made people turn a blind eye to mass murder, plunder and misery. They encouraged them to nurture their selfish nature. It is evident from how many involved in the large scale butchering of lives called the second world war reminisce (sometimes with a nostalgic smile) about those days when they mercilessly stole from a person while sending him/her to death in the gas chamber.

Now, it is wealth. If you are rich, you get subsidies. If you are poor, you get free poison to remove yourself from the equation. All over the world, people are fighting merciless corporations to survive. We somehow seem to have got this idea stuffed into our brains that automation is the one solution to all problems. 

Automation is good, but it does not always have to mean removing people from the picture. Tools must be used only to enhance human efficiency. Not to replace it. That is the only way to maintain some kind of balance of life on earth. When we remove living beings from a process, it ceases to help life. Period. The false efficiency that we see when we remove people from a process is going to come at us hundredfold and hit us hard. So hard that we cannot stand up again. 

Look what we have done so far! Medicines save lives, but polluting our natural resources, and then creating medicines to control the damage we caused, and trying to profit from that is outrageous. Educating our children to become worker bees rather than creators - that is another great mistake of ours. It is not too late yet. Let us wake up. 

Let us walk that extra stretch instead of taking the motor vehicle. Let us boil water and drink instead of buying packaged water. Let us peel that fruit and consume fresh juice instead of drinking soda (A friend rightly said, "Why would anyone pay and put CO2 into their body when it is throwing it out every minute?"). Let us pay some extra money and buy organic food - it will save our posterity a lot of expense. Let us bring back the kitchen garden concept in our own little way. Let us not rush to the hospital or pop some pill for headaches and colds - ask your grandmother for a natural cure. Teach that to your children. I am doing most of these, and trying to do the rest.

Let us come up with ways to connect back with nature. Let us let other lives live. Let our children live in homes surrounded by gardens, animals and birds with pure air to breath in the future, instead of living in concrete jungles with dark colored jump suits as predicted in sci-fi movies.

The Artist Shrugged

This is attempt number  2 of the same experiment that I tried in my previous post. I wrote whatever sentence came to my mind. No editing, absolutely. I did not plan on any plot, no ending in mind. This is just to see what I can come up with by letting my mind go free. This is fun!

Artists are said to be miserable people. Angry, anti-social, unhappy and all those sad adjectives. Are miserable people capable of producing art? Are they angry because of their art or are they angry in general? I don't know but this post is not about that.

Michelangelo woke up one morning. He decided he is going to make a statue. He took his mallet and started chipping away a block of marble. He did not use any miniature model for reference. He wanted spontaneity. His hands were used to the pressure of holding a mallet and hitting it against the hard marble for hours. His eyes were acclimatized to seeing only white color for most part of the day...and night. After all, white has all the colors in it, right? His eyes were technically not missing out on anything.

He was trying to shape the curly hair of the man..err..woman..err he had not decided that yet. Spontaneity  remember?

That is when it happened. *Thud* He turned just in time to miss the heavy object falling from above. It just missed his elbow and crashed down. It was a piece of the ceiling. One more piece fell down. Another. And another. More and more. He then looked up. The building was collapsing. He saw this huge building crumbling down.

A terrorist attack, he thought. 

No no, that is not until a few centuries later.

What now, then?

Oh, the other "family". The enemies of the Medici. (I would like to point out to the readers, it is spelled like Medikki but pronounced like Medichi. Remember Rachel's interview scene in Friends? Gukki...Goochi...Gucci..he he!)

He picks up the statue and runs with the mallet and chisel in his other hand. The stone is heavy. Thankfully, he had picked a relatively small piece of marble to experiment on spontaneity.

After a few days, the carnage had subsided. His patrons were alive, which guaranteed his life too. He decided to resume his experiment. He had shaped the nose rather bluntly. So he decided to make it a baby's statue. He was just going to give it finishing touches. 

One of his assistants came along hesitantly and asked Michelangelo to check his progress on a boring piece of work commissioned by a wealthy merchant who always paid in time and had the worst taste in Florence social circles. Michelangelo said, "don't bother me, idiot! Don't you see I am doing something?"

His assitant got flustered and dropped his pallet. It hit Michelangelo's right leg by mistake before hitting the ground. Michelangelo's face turned the color of the blood that was spilled a few days ago in the city. He said "Idiot!" and banged his mallet with irritation. 

*Bang*

The statue cracked in the middle. The blunt nose was now two tiny tunnels with one curved side and one flat side. So much for spontaneity.

"Well", Michelangelo shrugged. "What did you expect from me other than anger? Aarrgh!"

Power play

This post is an exercise I tried out just now. I wrote whatever sentence came to my mind. No editing, absolutely. I did not plan on any plot, no ending in mind. This is just to see what I can come up with by letting my mind go free. I enjoyed it.

She opens her eyes. The chandelier is going to fall down. The bear yawned. On TV  Oh no, it is the actor who resembles a bear. A dog barks in the street. The aroma of fresh filter coffee decoction tugs her nostrils. She closes her eyes again.

The chandelier goes back up. It is just swinging on the elastic rope that connects it to the ceiling. A lone spider is spinning a web on it. How on earth does the eight legged fellow get any sleep, she wonders. She goes back to sleep.

The AC sputters and goes off. Power cut time. Ugghhhh, she groans, rolls over and gets up from bed. Ambles down the hall to brush her teeth. She is all fussy about it like this: "I have to wake up, walk all this way, open the tap, squeeze tooth paste, put it on the brush, and brush. Twice. Why god, why me?!" First world problems in the third world. That is how confusing the situation is in the country.

Newspaper. No. This is not 1990. Facebook. Twitter. Gmail. Whatsapp. Checked. Coffee consumed. Off to bed again. No, 2 more hours before power comes. Cha.

Goes to the veranda. Vegetable vendor lady passes by, shouting "Keeraiiiii". A man cycles by, shouting "Pazhaya paper!". A kid bumps into an uncle's scooter. Uncle is raising his voice and calling upon all gods in heaven and all devils in hell to lend some sense to the kid. The smirks and runs off after bestowing a kick to the rear of uncle's scooter. Uncle drives away, his shouts over the engine's roar still lingering in the entire street's ears.

Eyes on the clock. Not even an hour down. The balcony offers time pass activities similar to those offered by the veranda. One hour passes. One more hour to go. She checks the mobile. Charge available. It is 10 AM. She mentally eliminates areas without power cut and shortlists ones likely to suffer a power cut now. Besant Nagar. Ok. Now the list is sorted and prioritized  based on the ability of each of her friends in those areas to sleep in spite of the sweat during a power cut and the degree of boredom or irritation they are capable of producing. This exercise takes only 2 minutes for her practiced mind.

She places a call. 

"Hey power cut here. 40 minutes more for it to be up again."

"I know. It is total shutdown today. It will be back up only at 5 PM."

She knows this friend is always a harbinger of bad news. Now if power does come back in 40 minutes, it will be "hence proved" that the friend is a liar. If it doesn't she is bad luck. She goes back to the veranda and sulks.

Happily ever after. Not.

All this harping about family and friends. Yes, they are all important. But you know what, I realized one thing. Only you will remain with yourself forever. No one else does. Not even your dog or your favorite dress. If something remains with you longer than normal, then it is not the same. The dog is old, the dress is tattered.

I never got this really. I am not sure I still get it deep down. I have realized it but I guess it will take a lifetime to understand and get used to it. I partly blame the stories we listened growing up for making this so hard to live with. The fairy tales always end with people living happily ever after and all glowing and gooey. In real life - the only gooey thing is the gondhu(gum) in TVS nagar post office. So henceforth, fairy tales are going to be changed, with a touch of normalcy.

So Cinderella got her Prince Charming and they got married. They lived happily in the castle, but not ever after. No. They fought over his hunting with friends and her preoccupation with their kids. They threw plate at each other in their imagination. And then they made up. And one day one of them died. The other probably died a few days or years afterward, wondering what went wrong with the "ever after" part.

Snow white and the prince married and lived happily, for a while. She took a bite from so may other free apples and fell asleep, vomited and coughed up bunny rabbits, all of which the prince had to remedy. And then the prince went about looking for an apple that would make her hate apples. And then one day, she ran away to a land far far away with apple orchards.

The frog turned to a prince and married the princess. After many years of bliss, they got into an argument and walked around the palace arguing. They reached a well and the prince tried to kiss the princess to stop arguing. But she had turned into a frog now. No one knows what happened after that.

These are just a few of the fairy tales we have heard as kids but you get the drift, don't you? If you have kids, make sure you tell them a normal story. Don't raise their expectations in life. It is one thing to be positive and another to be misleading. You know it is just a fairy tale. The child, or its sub conscious mind does not.

The philosophy of coolness

Generally, normal people are ignored. And then there are some cool people who don't care about what others think about them. They also don't care about their impact on others. They are cool like that.

Today, since I am feeling like a normal person and because I am generally jobless, I pondered about coolness.

Let me declare now that I am not a cool person. There are so many people who will vouch for that. So, like all uncool people, I have a curiosity about cool people. As a result of my "deep thinking", I came up with some findings. This is purely based on a very limited sample space comprised of personal examples of people who have been declared cool by others.

1. Cool people do not use formal language or ordered lists (I just did that. Hence proved, I am not cool).
2. They talk anything in front of anyone and do not care about anything. They are free spirits.
3. They have more than 400 friends on Facebook.
4. They can spend as much as they want, and do crazy stuff which is popular, like shouting bad words in public.
5. They like Russell Peters.
6. They talk to anyone and everyone and always smile. This part makes me wonder whether they had plastic surgery on their face. How can people keep up a fake smile for so long?
7. They hate routine of any kind. They sometimes do not brush because that would break the "normal" routine.
8. Being responsible is being boring, according to them.
9. They will rush over, shake your hand and talk as if you are the most important person in the world. The next moment they are gone and sometimes don't even recognize you the next day.
10. They are not attached to anything. I am not going to elaborate on this point.

The one important lesson I have been forcefully taught is that one must always be careful while dealing with these folks. But that is what we normal folks never do. And this is my philosophical derivation for the day.

Time pass with bus pass

The most interesting part in a bus journey, for some people, is feeling the wind on their face while travelling. For some, it is the roadside scenery that they get to see. For some, it is the nap. For some, it is conversations with strangers. For some - the movie (in video coaches).

For me - none of the above. I prefer dreaming with my eyes open.

The wind on my face - that is a problem. First of all, the wind does not restrict itself to a 2 dimensional circle shape and caress my face alone. It encompasses the entire head and whips my hair around. It gets tangled and messy. Now you may imagine me with an absolutely displeased expression - inverted U-shaped mouth and narrowed eyebrows. That is how painful it is for me to even imagine messy hair. If there is something girly about me, it is the fuss I make about my hair. It has to always be neatly combed. One can never find me in an "out-of-bed" hairdo. Ever. When I see someone with uncombed, tangled hair, I feel like fishing out a comb from my bag and smoothing it out. Apparently, I have a calling for that kind of social service. So, needless to say, I always wear a scarf when I am not travelling in a completely covered vehicle with the windows rolled up. 

A nap in the bus - never. There are some people who can sleep anywhere, anytime. Not me. I am like those FB forwards that are popular these days - a scared-to-close-eyes-in-the-shower kind of person. Also, what if someone put a mosquito in my mouth when I am asleep? What if a lizard falls in? Since I have travelled more in India only, I have been exposed to such unwanted but omnipresent insect population in the bus. What if a cockroach went for a walk on my hand and I never knew because I was asleep? Most importantly, what if someone stole my wallet which had my ID card and Rs.5? (Yes I was the "porathuku bus pass irukku" type of girl). Even during school tours, I used to be the only person awake in the bus. It was not because I was paranoid in the school bus with my friends. People had built up a reputation that I was the girl who never slept in the bus. I had to maintain that. Peer pressure.

Video coaches are interesting. If the bus driver likes black and white movies, it is fun. I love MGR movies. They are so much fun and contain excellent rofl worth material. If you don't watch B&W movies, try one. Start with this. Arjun and Gaptun movies are always janaranjaka (entertaining). What I cannot take are Vijay movies. Shabba! All that noise and shouting! Kanna, there is something called volume button, we will make use of it if we want to hear you better, please don't shout in my ears. My worst experience was once when I got into a bus in Coimbatore in the evening. I hadn't eaten lunch. It was a 5 hour journey and the movie of the day was Selvaraghavan's Kadhal Konden. By the time that depressing movie was over, due to hunger and the negativity in the movie, I felt like throwing up. I never traveled in a video coach after that.

My greatest sore point about bus travel was, is and I guess, will always be - conversations with strangers. Anyone who has read my posts must have gathered by now that I am not a normal person. I identify the weirdest things to worry about and spot the silliest things to laugh at. If someone with droopy eyes sits near me, I worry when they would fall asleep and when their head would start falling on my neck. I even plan how to shift their head away and scan the bus to see if there are any other free seats with people who look wide awake. Now if they are awake - that presents various other interesting possibilities.

The first kind of people are those who do not talk. I like them, but they eat - throughout the journey. In addition to the constant roar of the bus, one can hear a noise that reminds you of a cud chewing cow near your ear. Annoying. Very. If that is annoying, the furtive glances they shoot at you and the way they crouch around their food is annoying to the superlative degree. I feel like standing up and taking an oath to assure the lady that I will never covet her greasy vazhakka (raw plantain) bajji.

Some people set their minds on the impossible task of making me talk. I am a listener. Conversation is something I prefer to listen to. These people don't understand that. What do you do? Where are you going? Do you have a job? What are your parents doing? Are you going to get married? Do you have a boyfriend? Sometimes I just give them a smile in return for every question. Sometimes, I play along. I invent a whole new person. I try out all the names that my parents could have given to me instead of this one. I try out different professions for my mother. Sometimes, she is a doctor. Sometimes she is a housewife. I sometimes have 2 elder brothers, one working as a police officer, if the person near me seems shady.

And then there are those who talk. On their phone. 

"ALooo! Aan..Sollungaaa...Kekudhaa??? Na nalla irken...Aven epdi irkyaan? Veetuku vandaana?" * maximum volume * - I know I can never sleep even if I want to. In fact, no one in the bus can.

"Hi" * giggles * "Hmmmm..." "Hmmm....?" "Hmmmm...!!!" * giggles * "Mmhmmm..." * Looks at me and looks away * "Mmhmm..." * giggles * - This is when I get mild headache.

"Hel-Hello..Can you hear me?" "How can they do that? Tell them they have to pay up immediately" "This side 1 crore turn over, that side 1 crore turn over" "Next month Delhi program" - Mild laughter begins in my head.

"Hello? Yes" * listens for 3 seconds * "Not interested" * hangs up * "Cha, who wants their credit card? This is one headache!" - I bestow a look of camaraderie.

"Hello Dubai ah?" - Intense laughter in my head. I exert maximum self control to keep a straight face. Such phone calls are made to UK, US and European countries too, smack at midnight or in the early morning hours for those folks, if they are not imaginary.

But when it is a Wednesday afternoon and you are in an AC bus, you get the window seat and there are not many people in the bus. It is not a video coach. That journey is bliss. Bus journeys can be fun, only the timing and ambiance has to be perfect.

The Social Experiment

Sound and Bala tried a social experiment. One situation - A bus ride. A pretty girl smiles at the protagonist. Bala says what goes on in my mind and vice versa. Not very surprisingly, we were correct about each other.

Sound's mindvoice

Ah! A pleasant bus ride. Cool breeze is sweeping the land.

Oh! My hair is flying. Let me tie a scarf. The girl sitting next to me is pretty. Will she think that I am putting scene and all?

Let her think whatever she wants, I will tie the scarf. Else, my hair will become a mess. Oh! My elbow touched that girl.

"Sorry"

Why did she smile back at me. Am i looking funny? Cha! I hate that girl. Everybody ties a scarf. What is there?

Oh! wow its drizzling.

Hey it started raining.I love rains.Cha! i will get stuck in traffic. I can't reach home in time.Why it should rain now?

Ean enaku matharam ipdilam aarathu? Why does it happen to me always? Why god, why me? 

Bala's mindvoice

That's a nice cool breeze...It would be great to have a beer now.

Let me stretch my legs. I wish I could doze off.

Oh, now here's a pretty girl. She is pretty, but tiny.

I bet she will be prettier with glasses.

Her hair is flying. What is she thinking? Oh she is looking at me.

Is she feeling uncomfortable? She is narrowing her eyebrows, her forehead is crinkled, she is thinking whether she should tie up her hair. She smiled at me now. Let me smile back and then look away, she will be confused...or maybe I should smile and keep looking at her, she will get scared and it will be funny.

Its raining now.

Oh no I hate rain, I will get all wet. Let me call Sound to bring her car and get me out of the rain.

I wish I could have a beer now.

True or Fal(l)se?

(This article was originally written and published this week in the IGSA Scratchpad magazine for the November issue. Reblogging it here for other readers.)

Fall is the first semester in the US for most Indian students. It is a commonly noted pattern that students come to the US for international exposure, and after reaching here, painstakingly search out people from their own regions within the home country (if possible same city/street also), form a group and enjoy the great social life within that circle. But this trend has changed these days with the advent of Facebook. People do not form such groups after coming here. They do it even before coming here. The international exposure is typically limited to the climatic nature. Anyway, that is not what I am supposed to be writing about.
 
When I decided to “take the GRE and go to the US to study”, I did exactly what all of you must have done: talk to people who had already done that.

“Fall or Spring?” asked the great one. That is when it started. I thought, what’s a Fall? Fall from where? Spring to where? But I could not ask that to her. So I said, “Ummm…haven’t decided yet, tell me generally.” She knew I didn’t know. I knew she knew I didn’t know. She knew that too, but then she was the great one, the one that had been there and done that already.

I finally gathered that notwithstanding the reasons for calling what we learned in our text books as “autumn”, that season is apparently called Fall in this part of the world. I did not complain, because the concept of 4 seasons itself is incredulous to me, or anyone from South India. We only have degrees of summer interspersed with bouts of rain to clear the dust on the roads.

 

Since this issue falls in the Fall semester, I am going to write all about Fall. Fall is widely recognized as a beautiful season. “Fall colours” is a term I hear a lot. I can safely vouch for its presence in cosmetic range promotions, dress collection ads and Facebook photo albums. This is also the football season in the US. Only, it is not actual football. They throw and catch the ball, but call it football. Interesting, really.

Fall is a great season to start your stay in the US because you will have absolutely no problem in adjusting to the new country. The weather is unpredictable, but you are used to that already. And then there is Deepavali that falls in the month of November. You get reminded of everything you did back home – burst crackers, wear new dresses, eat sweets and receive money from elderly relatives. But hey, we have the Thanksgiving sale in November. You can sit outside BestBuy all night, tented up in the cold and buy that ipad which seems less costly because it has been purchased in the Thanksgiving sale. That is just seasonal purchase syndrome, but it is fun if you like that kind of thing.

If you are from South India, you must have celebrated Navratri by arranging dolls in steps, eating sundal and singing songs. Here, you get to dress up as your favorite horror movie villain and frighten people – mostly, those on your Facebook friends list in India.

Yes, the semester begins with mild bewilderment. You attend classes to keep your part-time job, fight with roomies, get desperate about the internship scenario, do homework (who has ever done those things before, you wonder) and write exams with pencils. During mid-October, the bewilderment is complete. Some of you haggle with travel agents from September to get a good rate for December tickets to India. By the time you book tickets and leave to India, you feel like you are in a long-distance relationship with your travel agent…

I apologize for the digression from the topic. I had meant to demystify “Fall”. Summer ends in Fall and winter begins from Fall. So when is Fall? I am not sure. In a few years, I think I will confidently tell you that there is no such thing as Fall. It is a scam by IDunnoWho to create confusion among desi students preparing for their masters application. I got an email yesterday from my mother’s friend’s daughter’s friend, now in her 3rd year of engineering. She wants to apply for masters in the US. I did not want her to feel the uncertainty and fear that I felt 2 years ago. So I replied to her that I will help out with everything. She just needs to tell me, “Fall or Spring”.

Birthday Bums

Yes, you read it right. Bums, not bumps. It has been reported recently that there is a group that keeps invading birthday parties. The Birthday Aggression Beater Youths (BABY), a non-profit organization that aims to prevent acts of aggression in birthday parties, has done some really good work in carrying out relief activities in severely affected birthday parties.

BABY has done extensive and in-depth research on the modus operandi of these "bums". The organization says that bums are all around us. "They look very normal, and act like normal people. The sad part is that most of us do not realize it even while we are being attacked.", says a spokesperson from BABY. 

Bums can slip in as one of the attendees, and the worst cases are when a bum is one of the organizers of the party. Luckily, there are a few indicators that can help you judge whether your party is being attacked:

1. If the party seems to be going berserk with strange people entering and telling others what to do, you are under attack. Take the cake and run. Oh, take the birthday baby along too.
2. If the party is being held near a swimming pool and random people start pushing in other people randomly.
3. If no one is wishing the birthday baby but all guys are trying to impress some girl in the gathering and all girls are bitching about the same girl.
4. If everyone seems to be more bent upon beating the birthday baby than singing the birthday song.
5. If it feels like a nightmare and you want to leave your own party.

Most people can relate to the scenarios described above. So what can you do if you are planning a birthday party?

1. Plan a party without a cake. Bums avoid cakeless birthday parties.
2. Plan a party that involves a Carnatic music kutcheri. Even if there is chocolate cake, bums flee at the mention of classical music.
3. Never plan a party by the pool, that is like an open invitation to anyone who is roaming about joblessly.
4. Never invite pretty girls to the party.
5. Arrange for some strong bouncers in front of your house to throw out bums.
6. Plan party games. Something involving XBox for guys.They will be lost in it and not force you to play Smear-the-cake or push-me-in-water type kindergarten games.
7. For girls - Start a rumour that one of the guys is checking out one of the girls. Never name the guy or the girl. That will keep them busy and happy.
8. Now sing the birthday song, wish the birthday baby, and sit back with a piece of cake.

In case of emergency situations, reach out to the BABY emergency hotline (564-WET-BABY).
For post-attack post-traumatic counselling, contact (564-CRY-BABY)

The Chemistry of Love

One lesson that I have learned in life is that people in love are opportunistic. Not judging them, but I don't like it very much when they use me.

Do I sound mean? Yes? Yes, I am like that :)

The Chemistry of love

I am not going to name names, but just assign alphabets as aliases for real people. Let us do this like a chemistry equation. Just so that it sounds like it makes sense. I used to love chemistry at school (the subject). The one that existed between my fellow students - not much, in cases where they tried to use me.

Assume X and Y are a couple, or hope to be one. The best solution would be for X to ask Y out or vice versa and get on with their lives. But no, that did not happen very often. X and Y looked at each other. They stared at each other. They shot sidelong looks. Y specialized in executing the sweeping glance covering the entire class but lingering a few seconds more on X. Y would start laughing suddenly when we were having a serious conversation about the length of the ribbon on M's plaits that day. But that did not ruffle me because it just meant X crossed her peripheral vision with his hand on his sidekick's shoulder. I noticed all these things, because I was jobless like that.

X would visit the temple near school, because she wanted to see Y playing cricket in the ground nearby. She'd pull me along, because then we were two pious girls talking in the temple and not one girl gaping at a guy. The interesting fact was that I was the one who used to talk, and listen. She was busy checking him out.

We were the last ones to leave tution because then he could saunter over and make fun of ME so that she could laugh. Huh.

We were the only people to have lunch in the classroom so that he could ogle at her from outside.

I could not skip the boring field trip because then people would talk if she walked alone with him.

She cut my call (her call would have woken me up) the minute she saw his second call and expected me to wait by the phone.

And the conversations we had? They were always laced with "You know what that fellow said?" "I told him..." "He is so funny" "I hate him" "These guys n all..." You know how it is. One gets to nod and approve. Always. Even if you were bored. Even if you also wanted a chance to bore other people. (Yes, I got my chance now! I have a blog to bore people.)

What happened to these couples? Some of them got married and that was the last I heard of them. Some of them moved on and got married to other people. It does seem funny to me now. I can imagine how I must have looked when I was treated like a monkey in the game of throw and catch. Very funny.

So you ask me where is the chemistry part? Here:

X and Y's courtship should have been a simple reaction like this:

Unfortunately for me, they chose to make it a reaction that required the presence of a dummy catalyst, like this:

In case you don't know what a catalyst is, "A catalyst is a subtance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction, but which is left unchanged by the reaction."

I am still single. That says it all :)

Rumor has it

Did you hear...?

Rumors are fun. Really. Even when they are about you, sometimes they are fun. Apparently, in this part of the world, there is a rumor (or a rumor that there is a rumor) about me that I have a boyfriend. Nice, no?

I can imagine my close friends pointing and laughing at the very idea. If there is one thing that is an established fact among my friends, it is my absolute ignorance about "dating", "relationship" and things of the mushy kind. My best friend's favorite jibe at me is about how I wouldn't even realize it if a guy were trying to ask me out. So, there could be a measure of truth in the rumor - I might have a boyfriend about whom I myself am not yet aware of. I give it to the rumor-mongers.

And there are other generic rumors. My favorite one at school was, "no class today". I personally tried to start a rumor once - that the teacher slipped on the stairs and fell down, so no class. I had always imagined that scene with the teachers I did not like. My attempt fizzled out. Not even one soul in the class considered buying the lie. 

That was one of the earliest failures in my life. But I did not lose hope. I decided to perform a Root Cause Analysis for the fiasco (budding software engineer). I arrived at these causes:

1. Lack of lying skills - I had to admit, the teacher slipping in a staircase that consisted of 3 tiny steps and being rendered unable to come to class was a bit of a stretch on one's imagination.
2. Unconvincing body language while lying - This problem is caused by problem 1 because body language  efficiency is directly proportional to the "believability" of the lie.
3. Lack of support - Even my close friends did not support me in the effort. They did not have to believe in the rumor, they just had to talk about it.
4. Lack of incentives - I should have garnered support and offered incentives such as guarantee of not including their names in the mischief makers list if I got caught, bondas in my house that evening or something like that.

So what do we infer from the paragraph above? Rumors are instructive. They indirectly encourage self introspection.

And then there are rumors on a slightly larger scale. There was a rumor in our area that a certain ghost was frequenting the railway crossing at night time. I always wondered why ghosts chose night time. Probably because they are typically dressed in white and have a pale white complexion. If you look at it from a "rational" perspective, they are spotted at night due to better visibility conditions at night, with a dark background. Anyways, this rumor was harmless and in fact, had a positive effect, because kids were scared to wander far from the house at night and not many people frequented the railway track for digestive waste disposal.

And....rumor has it that people who type too much will not get dinner tonight. So, I am cutting this post short. 

P.S: It is rumored that those who read this post and do not leave nice comments on FB or Twitter will be tormented with more such posts. Just FYI.

I don't swear

It is now very fashionable to inject swear words into one's vocabulary. And it irritates me. It also seems to be something people think they can flaunt. Not shamefully, but proudly. And then there are those who support such people. I don't know who makes me more indignant.

Decency has lost the appreciation it deserves. Vulgarity and cheapness have pushed it out of the social limelight and are basking in their new-found social acceptance. I partly blame social media for this. People are now proud to display their mediocrity. They beam ear to ear when they talk about how perverted they are. Showing lack of respect to others has now become the "in thing".

Being frank and outspoken is very different from being brazen and rude. And again, it is peer pressure that makes people accept most of the nonsense that is promoted these days. And when people like me do not join the bandwagon, we are criticized. No, we are bullied.

Well, I am not someone who will "go with the flow". I am this way and I dare anyone to try and change me. If you feel it is your freedom of expression to belittle everyone around you, it is my free will to not listen to you.

If you think I am old fashioned, who cares? I do not think much about you, so your opinions don't matter either. One thing is for sure - however low these people stoop down, I will not reach down and call them names. I have a blog to rant about it. Without swearing.